


Blessings & Banes

by Karieauthoress (ksrandomme), ksrandomme



Series: Angel [3]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-26
Updated: 2009-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:41:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksrandomme/pseuds/Karieauthoress, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksrandomme/pseuds/ksrandomme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Sandburg is feeling just a bit stifled after finally receiving his doctorate. He wasn't prepared to have James Ellison come for a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blessings & Banes

  
Standing outside the hallowed halls of Rainier University, Blair Sandburg picked a thread on his tweed coat and sighed. His hair floated freely around his shoulders after he had untied it from its binding. He looked around until his eyes latched onto the fountain in front of Hargrove Hall. His feet automatically took the initiative and walked him over where he could sit at the edge and watch the water for a moment, his briefcase at his side. He sighed again.

He had finally made it. He was Doctor Blair Sandburg. His PhD was secure. But Rainier had no room for him now and he was without a job. Maybe if he stayed in the area, a class would be open for him in a year?

“Great… so now what do I do?” He gazed across the quad, taking in all the scenery and storing up memories. He was going to have to leave the area in order to live. He couldn’t afford the warehouse for much longer and his car was still in the shop. Now he understood yet again how the girls he had worked with under the guise of a hooker for hire felt. He had nowhere to go and no clue as to what to do next. The difference between him and those girls was he had more education. He had a Masters degree and a PhD in anthropology.

He could try to find a consulting job with some big law firm or something like that. He would have to look around tomorrow. Now all he really wanted to do was go out to dinner with someone and celebrate his good fortune. But leaving for a yearlong sabbatical, six months of which he actually spent on the streets, had lost him quite a few friends. People who were not privy to his plans mistakenly believed that Blair had slipped down to the lowest place. It would take some time to win his friends back, and that’s if he even wanted them.

Standing again, his steps began to take him towards the warehouse district and home. At least there he could shut himself away and feel comfortable. The nights were getting longer and colder now. He would have to huddle in the bed with the covers piled on in an effort to keep warm. For some reason his thoughts turned to the cop he had saved in the alley. He stopped moving, wondering where those memories had come from, and why now. He shrugged it off as reminiscing the warm time he spent with the cop, his body heat more than enough to keep the trembling to a minimum that one week of nights.

In another fifteen minutes, he reached his door, fitted the key in the lock and opened his home. Once inside, he turned and locked up behind himself before turning on the light. The first thing he noticed was the red light on his answering machine flashing a new message. He tapped the button once and listened to it play as he dropped his things in their customary places and headed to the ‘fridge for a beer.

 _*#“Dr. Sandburg… Jeez that sounds nice to these old ears. You worked hard for that credential, Blair. Be proud! Just wanted to call and congratulate you.”#*_ The voice was Eli Stoddard, one of Blair’s anthropological heroes. The praise made him smile as he sipped his beer. The tape in the machine continued playing.

 _*#“I hope this is the right number. Angel, I know you were defending your dissertation this week. How’d it go? Give me a call and let me know what went down. You have my digits.”#*_ Blair smiled again while listening to Frankie’s deep Philly accent. He made a mental note to call the man back and let him in on the news.

 _*#“Dr. Sandburg… you might not remember me… this is Tommy Sanchez. I was in one of your earlier classes. I heard about your situation and wanted to offer some help and advice?”#*_ Blair nearly spilled beer down his front as he dove for the fast forward button. Another well wisher for Blair Sandburg’s slide into whoredom. Shit. He was going to have to make some sort of statement… or better yet, when he published the book he would explain it all in a foreword blurb, about how he was playing the game in disguise. He took a couple of deep breaths as he tried to settle his nerves.

It sucked that everyone thought about him as some sort of boy for hire. Part of the problem was that he was here where he knew everyone. He thought about taking a break and getting out of town for a while. But where to go? He could try to find his mother, but frankly the idea of explaining his disappearance for the last year did not appeal to him. Then there was always St. Sebastian’s.

Before he could go on any further with his thoughts, the phone rang. He debated letting the machine get it, afraid that it was another ‘do-gooder’ with an overly helpful attitude. A click decided him as the machine did pick up and he could hear his cheerful voice ask that a message be left at the beep.

 _*#“Angel, honey? I know you weren’t ‘specting one of us to call you here. Is Peaches, Baby. I’m sorry I missed ya last week... Sad eyes is dead. Said he found some rich, Sugar Daddy in Seattle. He went, but something happened and he came back the other night, hopped up on something nasty. He died at the clinic. I know you liked him a lot, so I thought you’d want to know. Take care, sweetie. Stay outta trouble, yeah?”#*_

The machine clicked off when she hung up the phone. Blair didn’t notice. He leaned heavily against the kitchen cabinets and slid down the doors to the floor. Sad Eyes, Rusty Taylor from Detroit Michigan, was dead. This was terribly wrong. The kid had only been on the street for three months before Blair found him. They had talked about Rusty going back to school as soon as he had enough money. Frankie had tried to help him, but then he had disappeared without a trace. Now Blair knew why.

And now he knew where Peaches was the night that the undercover cop had slipped out of the shadows and practically fallen into his arms. He remembered that cop, Jim something. Frankie hadn’t told him a last name, trying to keep Blair’s actual involvement down to a minimum. It was men like that who worked damn hard, risking their very lives to expose the criminal element in their city and beyond. Blair admired the courage they had. Naomi would have flipped if she could hear his thoughts.

But this bright young man slipped through the cracks and found something that was not good for him. And now he was gone. Blair was now depressed. Looking around the place that would soon be taken from him as a home, he sighed. “What am I supposed to do now?”

The knock on the door brought him out of his distressing thoughts and he looked up with a start. He wasn’t expecting anyone tonight that he knew of. Standing, he wiped his hands on the back of his slacks while looking out the small peephole he had drilled into the door. Recognizing the person standing on the other side, he stepped back from the door and stared up at the ceiling, looking for whatever deity hated him right now. Opening the door to reveal the very object of his earlier musings, Blair forced a smile to his lips. “Well, hello cop. Hope you aren’t looking for a little action tonight from me. I’m not on the market anymore.”

Jim leaned on the doorframe with one arm up above his head, and smiled back. “Hey Chief, good to hear you’re out of the business. You were too pretty for that shit. But that’s not why I came by.”

“Oh?” Blair asked, leaning against the doorjamb in front of the big man. This close to the cop, he could smell the spicy maleness that excited him and tempered him at the same time. Delicious. Jim shrugged before replying.

“I have a proposition for you that might help you out from your current predicament. It doesn’t involve sex or prostitution of any sort. And you might get to have some fun doing it.”

Blair glared hard at him, not liking where this conversation was going but unable to tamp down his curiosity. “Go on...”

Jim smiled, “How would you like to help take down the son of a bitch who fed poor Sad Eyes that lethal cocktail of drugs?”

Blair’s eyes widened, “You have my attention.”  



End file.
